Strib top of homepage, screen capture, Sunday, 6/26/2022 -
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"Battle lines being drawn, . . . stop Children, what's that sound? Everybody look - what's going down."
How else does the song go?
Young people speaking' their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
Right. What's going down is a focus on the Supremes' Roe kill. Making it the preeminent 2022 midterm issue, yes/no? With the practical implication, student debt burden will be back-burnered. Suck it up, kids.
If it works out that way, the predicted Dem bloodbath is assured. The young vote is needed.
SO --- Weaponize abortion rights please. It will do its GOTV share.
But if you hang the young out to dry the young will stay home, primaries and general election. They are needed to primary in progressives, and in the general, to keep the House, and take the Senate w/o two DINO roadblocks giving Biden an excuse. Then Biden will really be on the hot seat, since his excuse for inaction would be nullified.
BOTTOM LINE: A GOTV of the young will be necessary to avoid a GOP sweep.
The deep pocket donor class will not care either way since they own both parties.
Progress will be forestalled, the abortion fight perhaps lost in more States, and the chance to legislate the Roe standards into federal law - gone. For now, if not for good.
The donor class will not care. Abortion is not their key issue, tilting the playing field more in their favor is their game, and soaking the kids and putting them and women behind the 8-ball (in terms of assertion of rights lessening when other plights press), that is keen in line with deep pocket donor goals.
With a GOP sweep, perhaps another tax cut for the rich, with the likely Minnesota Scott/Birk GOP ticket already telling the rich that the State's income tax is on the table.
Gotta GOTV across the DFL spectrum in Minnesota. That means abortion drum beating. For sure. However - It also means fixing the student debt shithole. Which has to be done at the federal level. Executive order. Not a bandaid, but meaningful reform of the obscene status quo for low income young getting educated after high school graduation. So Amy and Tina, press the White House.
Or not, and instead let the GOP have its way, have the power and spoils. Statewide in Minnesota, Walz, Simon and Ellison should still win. But both legislative houses are on the line. Nationally, House and Senate.
The Crabgrass view. Being able to later say, "Told you so," would be no comfort. The time is now, the path is clear.
Politicians, get it done. Boost GOTV, all segments.
___________UPDATE___________
Old folks - those with still well honed memories - you remember, of course, Paul Ryan as Speaker, wanting to take away or take a first big chunk out of your SOCIAL SECURITY. Pay heed. Put a Republican in as Speaker, and the same shit will begin again. Curb it by keeping the House Democratic. In Minnesota, in particular, MN1 is up for grabs so grab it for the DFL, the party that would not dare mess with your Social Security. In effect, GOTV from young to old. Full spectrum, DFL effort.
__________FURTHER UPDATE___________
More of the same. A political DFL email. And
yes, say it again, abortion as an issue is likely to be major, but
everybody already has a viewpoint there, and GOTV focused only on the
loyalists on abortion will get them out, but it will not sufficiently
move the needle.
The email -
What this campaign is really about.
Hi,
My name is Teresa Mozur and I'm the Communications Director for the Murphy for Senate campaign. I live in Saint Paul where I'm the mother of a four year old. She had birthday this week, she loves animals, drawing, and going swimming.
I found out the Dobbs ruling came in while at her four year wellness visit. I sat stunned - we knew this was coming but you never know how it will really hit you when the moment finally arrives. I looked at her and realized this very body her pediatrician was making sure was growing healthy and strong would no longer be hers, a body she no longer has full autonomy over. From now on, she would not have full rights to decide her reproductive future.
My daughter is my source of joy and the reason why I fight for a better, brighter future than the one we've currently got. This fight is more than just one single issue, and bigger than one single person or candidate. The only way we win is to win together. To give it all we have. To refuse to lose hope in what we believe is possible.
This is, at its core, the reason why I continue to be committed to this campaign: it's not about the election, it's about building power, together. About doing the necessary organizing work to develop a deep bench of organizers, volunteers, activists - leaders - who will show up to every fight in order to make Minnesota the very best version of itself: one rooted in community, in values, invested in our shared future. I want to build power with leaders who are in this fight, committed to the real lives of people, unwilling to leave Minnesotans behind.
The fall of Roe means my daughter will not hold the same rights I once had. But I remain hopeful because I have to. I know there are so many Minnesotans like you and like me who won't forget the many ways our rights have been chipped away at, and each time it happens we choose to turn to each other rather than walk away.
That is what this campaign is about. Us, the collective power we hold when we come together, and never losing sight of what is possible. Contributing your time or money to this campaign means investing in organizing, in voter turnout, and in developing leaders. Today might not be the day you're ready to dive into the work, but when you are, I hope you join us.
Your friend,
Teresa
P.S. - We are starting a new Joy Fight Win Instagram account to celebrate the people who power this fight and share ways to get involved this election cycle. Follow us here.
First,
that last P.S. is a Mega link - Facebook in effect, and others like me
hate Facebook. Tone deaf that way. And, tracking links suck. Don't give
me tracking links to Facebook, please. Grow beyond that.
Most importantly - That -- the abortion issue alone -- is not what the election will be about. It will be off-year, no Presidential contest, broad-spectrum GOTV or lose.
.........................................
Somebody who knows Ken Martin should give him a kick in the ass and say, GOTV hinges on multiple blocs. Suggest Martin yank Biden's chain and say, meaningful student debt relief or bloodbath; and if Biden demurs, as we should expect, at least Ken gave it the good try.
And, SOCIAL SECURITY threatened under Paul Ryan needs mention, more than once. Ken can push that theme here, apart from Biden, but he'd have to be heard.
Vouchers. Do you want your child's public school education robbed? By private schools. Catholic schools. Charter schools are bad enough, don't bleed more public school cash into dead ends and/or less-accountable private special interests.
So, abortion, student debt relief, social security, and education - a spectrum of GOTV blocs, with each needing attention.
Shake Paul Ryan's ghost at the old folks. They are good always on GOTV, but ring their bell.
Fix
the obscene student debt situation now in place. Executive order, and
the other side will take it to court, and that will be seen, however the
judge shopping works out. We want to make it easier to have a top-flight educated populace, in the world economy and in the voting booths.
And remind people that K-12 education is in peril, with representative democracy bedrocked upon an educated electorate. Look at what we have instead, and that says fund it better and close off the leakage from public coffers in order to make public K-12 schooling as effective as feasible.
It has to be multifaceted to win. Yes, again, abortion is the biggest issue. But a narrowly focused GOTV approach is begging for grief. Yes, maximize that issue, and stress contraception is the next target to where Congress will have to legislate something close to preemptive Roe v Wade standards as federal statutory law.
Meaning a need for majority power, both houses of Congress.
Give the medical providers coverage, comfort, and let the system work as it has for the last thirty years. Whiners on the other side be damned, they are a clear minority, and pro-abortion people have to be shown to be open to others with differing views being able to live as they'd prefer- our side, not wanting to tell them what to do, how to run their lives; "Just get out of my face with your biases making you want to run my life."
Live and let live is a good tight way to say it. That covers gay marriage and LGBTQ+ questions. Blocs can unite behind live and let live.
Respect my privacy and my right to run my life, as you can run your own. Who'd not see that as the Golden Rule? What better than the Golden Rule do Republicans have?
Enough. Eyes on the prize, yes, but the prize is spectrum-wide GOTV better than the Republicans do on their GOTV front, not winning on one single focal issue, but losing on overall vote count.
Remember -
The home run only counts if you touch each base.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
That Teresa letter, another thing - a four year old. Years to reach puberty, a problem in the distance, while there are more immediate things. Yes, women of child bearing age getting into unwanted pregnancies, that is today. Baby four year old has space and time. And the homeless - now. Students making rent, food, and debt service, or barely missing, but with the future, the immediate future now and next month, etc., under the burden of worry causing them to be less vocal and judgmental citizens. Rolling with the punches instead of prospering. Lady, your four year old, I likely will have croaked before abortion availability and contraception is a daily concern for her. Between then and now I'd like saner medical care, eh?
Teresa seems a self-indulgent case. If she is communications director for a campaign, it will be the candidate's accumulated cred that will carry things, or it is a safe DFL district. But that one communication was a giant self-focused turn-off.
Keep at it Teresa. Push the federal elections, to get majorities in both Houses in order to fix abortion availability nationwide and by statute. Sanctuary abortion states is hardly the best option, but it is today, and your candidate's success, today, will keep Minnesota a sanctuary state. Moreover - Good you are committed long term. But for most people today and next week means more, and when Republicans piss on about pump price shock, they are on today's wavelength, however you see it.
Little baby four year old - at least a real human. Not a tissue mass surviving only via a placenta-cord combo, which the Christofascists keen about endlessly and with hypocrisy because they don't give one real shit about real living people getting fucked by their system.
Sicko folks that way. Little tissue things a woman wants removed mean more to them than the daily suffering of real sentient humans. Real sickos. Alito. The oil baron's daughter, out of the Notre Dame faculty. Ginni's spouse. Sick.
People suffer, well, that's God's way. Horseshit. It's naked, mean, capitalism's way and those hypocritical creeps are facilitator politicians who are pompous in their hundred page sophistries. There is nothing supreme about that. It's meanness. No matter how many pages get churned out by the Court clerks, it's mean. It is perpetuating an engineered non-level playing field between the privileged and the rest. Screw workers. Love embryos. Get real.
November in election years does not have to be a lesser evil time. It is people like Leonard Leo and his packed court creep-show that make it such, and each party has too many of that kind, which is why November in election years is lesser evil time, for now, as it was during my lifetime. It can be fixed, but those owning the power now will go to war to stop it being fixed. That is today's reality.
That is why they love student debt loads as a pacifier. Giant mortgages, as a pacifier. Excessive housing rental rates, as a pacifier. Things are engineered full of pacifiers. It is not haphazard. It is by design. Mitch McConnell has an advanced degree in Human Misery Engineering. Working on his PhD. Manchin on the same program. Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn already have their PhD. Paul Ryan, Bill Clinton, W, retired professors of Human Misery Engineering. They hone and tune their replacements.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of people like that. Those thinking "End Times" may not be as entirely wigged out as they at first blush seem. Who is to say?
___________FURTHER UPDATE_________
It has been explained to me you do not make your strongest argument stronger by adding a weak argument. What Teresa is doing is personalizing her strongest argument to make it stronger. Personalizing is used by journalists and others to set a stronger hook than attaches via a depersonalized presentation. A young couple with one kid, a daughter, being double income daycare payers, practicing contraception and perhaps thinking abortion availability, I favor it even with it being for others, might, with the personalization Teresa provides, shift to thinking when my girl matures, I want her protected. The hook is set strongly. That is what personalzation will do. NOTE that personalization is not weak added to strong, but making strong a more targeted emotion-evoking arrow.
One can view the suggestion of multi-bloc GOTV as somehow "cheapening" the powerful emotional impact of the Roe kill as a GOTV primary motivation. My outlook might be wrong, and the tactic of pounding away on Roe having been buried in sophistry, (which we can all see for what it is), doing that single focus strongly, consistently, and alone, might be best. Strategically, there are other issue blocs in the population, and ignoring them might be unwise. It is not clearly one or the other.